[HN Gopher] Why Carmakers Can't Transition to Newer Chips ___________________________________________________________________ Why Carmakers Can't Transition to Newer Chips Author : lambdasquirrel Score : 148 points Date : 2021-10-02 14:45 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (jalopnik.com) (TXT) w3m dump (jalopnik.com) | anaganisk wrote: | When a Power PC is perfectly capable for a MARS rover missions, I | dont see any reason why they must run Snapdragons. Unless some | evil company, starts ditching physical controls or starts shoving | Ads into Speedometer. And everyone follows. | | Im thankful that automobile tech didn't discover electron yet. | Imagine your speedometer consuming 200mb of ram. | willhinsa wrote: | Don't give them ideas! | ericbarrett wrote: | Too late: https://gizmodo.com/get-ready-for-in-car- | ads-1846888390 | [deleted] | [deleted] | baybal2 wrote: | > Im thankful that automobile tech didn't discover electron | yet. | | Too late. I am well aware of a few car dashboard clients using | it to their own detriment (imaging gluing CanBus I/O to | electron.) | sircastor wrote: | Speaking from experience, I can tell you automakers are already | shipping vehicles that some Infotainment apps are web | technologies. Not electron, but a similar system to run an | encapsulated web page. | | I'm doubtful of the cluster being run by a browser engine | though. | joezydeco wrote: | Mazda has been using _Opera_ running JS for their | infotainment since 2014... | leroman wrote: | Sounds like the auto-makers play down on the talent they have and | prefer to push the work outside, probably fearing they are not | able to execute. | | This reminds me of being a 3rd party selling service to some | company and they constantly ask for us to implement features that | they could easily add - but can't. They don't say that flat out | but we all understand what's happening.. | baybal2 wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28709481 | | > The aspect of the problem not talked about is that a lot of | automotive chips are really, really old. | | > And they are old, because of many certification requirements | set partially by the industry, and a few odd governments. | | > In reality, most of them are both less reliable, and harder to | work with in comparison to open market parts. | | > The only two things I seen chips with micron scale nodes used | in my life were: air conditioner boards, and car parts. | | For example, who in the world today makes PMOS TTL chips? I bet | the few foundries who can still do that will bill car parts | makers an arm, and a leg for keeping making something this old | | Want to migrate? Find somebody who can can translate hand-drawn | TTL chip to moderately modern CMOS under 60 years old. | | At times, the cases about I heard of car makers were having | troubles with were also nothing less of direct consequence of | conscious overengineering: some BWMs have one STM32 per window | switch just to blink the LED, and do ADC despite the switch | having just 5 positions. And now they can't ship because of this | single LED blinker. | wcunning wrote: | Window controls are safety regulated modules in modern | vehicles. They detect the closing force and reverse direction | off the required motor torque exceeds av threshold so that you | can't accidentally or intentionally choke someone with the | windows. This feature is required by standards bodies and some | regulators. | | Why not put those smarts in one big module, say the Body | Control Module which is always huge and already gets redesigned | and uses more expensive, smaller feature chips anyway you ask? | Well, we need to run a bunch of wires to the door, several for | the switch, power and grind and Hall effect sensor for the | motor and we need to account for the noise and power loss on | the long wire run because as a safety feature the sensing has | to be ASIL compliant to high fault tolerance. Turns out that | that length of wire is several dollars more than putting the | module in the door... These things are all done for a reason | and the automotive engineers aren't solely stuck in the old | ways. They're frequently penny pinched to death, but if you | look at the constraints they're doing their best. | baybal2 wrote: | > Window controls are safety regulated modules in modern | vehicles. They detect the closing force and reverse direction | off the required motor torque exceeds av threshold so that | you can't accidentally or intentionally choke someone with | the windows. This feature is required by standards bodies and | some regulators. | | All of this is achieved with a single <$1 part, fixed torque | clutch... But who in the world wants to intentionally choke | somebody with a power window? This add to the long list of | absurd product liability regulations in the spirit of one | demanding "do not operate the appliance with your genitals" | to be printed on every stove. | dharmab wrote: | I remember watching A Faster Horse, a documentary on the | Mustang. There was an interview with an accountant type at | Ford who pointed out a three cent difference in part cost | per car multiplied to millions of dollars at their scale. A | $1 part might have given him a heart attack. | imagi wrote: | Kids/dogs plus automatic windows... | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | Literally the thought I had :-) Been there, yelled at the | kid! | x0x0 wrote: | > But who in the world wants to intentionally choke | somebody with a power window? | | children. eg: | | https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=124854&page=1 | | > _A 1997 government study by the National Center for | Statistics and Analysis estimated power windows sent nearly | 500 people to emergency rooms in one year, and that half | the victims were small children._ | dragonwriter wrote: | > > the sameso that you can't accidentally or intentionally | choke someone with the windows. | | > But who in the world wants to intentionally choke | somebody with a power window? | | Accidental is the more significant problem, particularly | with children. | lucidguppy wrote: | This feels like lack of planning. The semiconductor industry was | a known entity for many years before this level of integration | came to vehicles. They should have known this would happen. | | Ultimately the industry will have to maintain their own | production for consistent silicon. | jes wrote: | > _This feels like a lack of planning._ | | In any complex undertaking, how can we know when enough | planning has been done? | dboreham wrote: | As mentioned above there are folks who's entire job is | maintaining the spreadsheet for said plan. | hef19898 wrote: | And you have to witness the mess without these people, or if | they aren't allowed to do their job, in order to believe it. | Better even, live the mess, I can assure you it is quite an | experience. | P24L wrote: | These "low-tech" fabs are e.g. in Malaysia and they are often | closed due to Covid.. | coryrc wrote: | Texas power outages took down one of the few major US plants | and a random fire took down another, at the same time as a | global pandemic. We're almost at the level of "imports banned | from China"-levels of implausibility here. | | Sometimes shit happens. | AbbeSomething wrote: | Is a part of the problem that the chips they are depending on are | so trivial and small that you would end up losing more when | cutting it up on a smaller process? I guess there is a limit to | how many chips you could put on a single wafer even if the chip | was only a single gate? | | Maybe the old nodes are efficient enough for the chips they need. | Then again it would make sense to update designs frequently | enough to stay at nodes that have plenty of capacity, perhaps | every 5 or 10 years or so? | coryrc wrote: | Capital costs of a fab are the single highest cost of producing | chips. So long as the fab is running it's cheap to keep running | so little reason to spend money to put cheap things on other | processes (which is an expensive design cost) when you can | later switch to a more complex chip (which should allow you to | reduce supporting components too) which takes advantage of the | new process size. | dale_glass wrote: | Wouldn't the solution be planning better? | | Sure, I understand that making a new car in combination with | making a new ECU or brake controller on a new process is going to | be stupidly dangerous and troublesome. So just don't. | | Rather than doing it as a part of a single project, there should | be a department or separate company making the ECU/controller. | This way when the semiconductor company moves forwards, ECU Group | starts a project targeting the new process, and releases the | results when it's ready. And meanwhile what goes into the cars is | the ECU built on the previous, well tested process. | | Also, are modern cars really in much need of custom silicon? | Micro-controllers are stupidly powerful now. There has to be off | the shelf hardware capable of handling what a car needs. There | are long standing architectures like ARM that don't require | starting from scratch every time somebody makes a better chip. | coryrc wrote: | Your comment displays a breathtaking amount of ignorance. | dale_glass wrote: | Then I welcome the opportunity to learn about something new. | Please explain what's wrong, I'm most interested. | coryrc wrote: | Start reading IEEE, SAE, or other trade magazines; get an | EE degree in the Midwest; get a job in the automobile | supplier industry; go to industry conferences or just read | their proceedings... | m0llusk wrote: | Can't is a really strong word. One potential solution that might | open some paths to innovation would be to split up the product a | bit more. Ship vehicles with extremely basic features only and | some of those features intentionally designed to be swapped out | in the short term. Use third party suppliers to swap in | instrument clusters, engine controllers, and such and allow those | to use all the latest chips. | bellyfullofbac wrote: | I look forward to the cyber-punkish future (real soon now?) where | there's an old beige computer case with a Pentium MMX sticker on | it on someone's passenger seat with wires snaking into the engine | bay. "Yeah the ECU died, so I had to hack together this | replacement...". | tyingq wrote: | There are cars where the enthusiast scene burns their own ECU | EEPROMS to compensate air:fuel calculations after installing | larger injectors, better flowing intakes, etc. | | Edit: There's also some "universal ECUs" from companies like | Haltech. They sell a single ECU plus some adapter cables to | make that single ECU run on a broad variety of cars from the | 90's. | | Possible since the 90's cars all have the same rough | types/numbers of sensors. Switchable software does the rest. I | imagine this doesn't work past some year of make as the cars | got more complex. | _0ffh wrote: | Yeah, but I think those enthusiasts are mostly just fixing up | calibration values, not changing the actual control software. | tyingq wrote: | It is more than just a few values, it's maps to plot a | curve. | | But they do actual control software too, though that's less | common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaSquirt | _0ffh wrote: | Well I never wrote "just a few", but I did write | "mostly". | | Also, disclosure: I'm intimately familiar with the ECU | software of a major player in the industry, though | primarily the part that governs the air system. It's | surprisingly sophisticated and extremely configurable | just by fiddling with those calibration values. | mhh__ wrote: | Maybe we'll have CMOS printers by then... (I can dream!) | ChuckMcM wrote: | The middle road is missed here. | | There are two problems, long duration supplies of a chip on the | same process, and the cost of making chips. | | If the semiconductor companies can figure out an ASIC/FPGA type | strategy that would allow any of the current chips in a car be | produced "dynamically", then the semiconductor company could | achieve their economies by just fabbing one design, and car | companies could achieve longevity by getting commitments for | production of that one design. | | Xilinx recently made some steps in a new direction by producing | what they called an "RF" SoC. Where RF stands for radio | frequency. Basically it had all of the analog to digitial and | digital to analog bits on the chip in addition to some FPGA | fabric and some ARM AARCH64 cores. Its expensive and small | quantity but I think it will turn out to be important in the long | run as the vanguard of chips that are not 'type specific' at the | time of manufacture. | | Imagine a company that has the same basic FPGA architecture, | packaged in a variety of automotive spec packages, with one-time | programmability. That would reduce the number of SKUs | considerably (basically by package type). | schiffern wrote: | > "We were able to substitute alternative chips, and then write | the firmware in a matter of weeks," Musk said. "It's not just a | matter of swapping out a chip; you also have to rewrite the | software." | | https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22595060/tesla-chip-short... | echelon wrote: | Why did car companies allow themselves to make such a strategic | mistake? Shouldn't they be on a standard microcontroller | architecture? | | Why not even use ARM, X86, etc? It'd save them money at this | point. And there wouldn't be a supply risk. | vvanders wrote: | There's an incentive for chip vendors to not standardize | since it makes migration hard and drives vendor lock-in. The | CPU cores are one part but equally important is the | peripherals and external featuresets. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | That incentive might exist, but what really drives the lack | of standardization is that every application has different | needs, so you end up with a common CPU and wildly diverging | configurations tailored to various applications. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | Wouldn't really make any difference. The last company I | worked for did pretty much everything with MCU's based on ARM | Cortex-M. | | All that shit's still not in stock anywhere. And remember | that ARM, x86, etc. only defines the processor architecture. | The I/O is far more important in a control application and | I/O is anything but standard across platforms. | | For one product we ended up buying a vendors entire supply | and redesigning the product to use it, crossing our fingers | that the supply chain would have unwound itself by the time | we ran out of inventory. | im_down_w_otp wrote: | Tier 1 suppliers have an incredible amount of influence in | that ecosystem, and Tier 1 suppliers have an incentive to not | be easily replaceable. That'd be my guess. | | I mean, it's an entire MASSIVE industry that's comprised | almost entirely of truly commodity technology, and so you get | all the perverse outcomes that happen when trying to | "differentiate" despite being commodity by inventing ways to | be "special" to drive lock-in. Interoperability only really | benefits the OEM, and the OEM isn't the only part of the | chain. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | Those processors aren't made on high reliability processes. | You don't want your ECU built with the same media processor | as the infotainment system. | somehnguy wrote: | Maybe I do! I've seen both fail just the same so it's not | like ECUs are failure-proof or something. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | Your radio dying won't kill you. | somehnguy wrote: | Correct, but you seem to have disregarded half my | comment. ECUs are not failure-proof and fail all the | time. | | I've never heard of anyone dying due to ECU failure | either..I'm not sure how that would even happen given all | the critical systems on a car are mechanical first with | electronic assist. So you can't lose steering, braking, | etc. The worst that happens is you lose power, which is | about the same risk as a subpar standard transmission | driver stalling out (and can also happen in a number of | different ways). Can you expand on how an ECU failing | might kill you? | | I would love if someone could elaborate on why I'm wrong | instead of drive by downvoting. This isn't reddit. | VLM wrote: | Its easier and more realistic to kill the company via a | recall. | | Take for example the Boeing 737-MAX. Eh, its bigger, | needs a little more elevator movement to simulate the | older model, just flex the software so it can wiggle a | bit more what could possibly go wrong? | | Likewise, remember the VW Diesel emissions "scandal". You | can nearly kill a company without actually killing | anyone. | | So, the specified ECU chip (which is no longer in stock) | could output 40 mA to the gas tank vacuum solenoid so we | spec'd the solenoid to draw 30 mA on the coldest day of | the year, usually it draws much less. Got a substitute | chip only rated to 20 mA usually it'll work fine, what | could possibly go wrong? Until it burns out and the | vacuum solenoid fails open and nationwide millions of | gallons of "excess" gas evaporate per year from sitting | cars. Harmless on an individual scale but on a nationwide | scale its a lot of ozone... Insert yet ANOTHER $35B | recall to replace all the ECUs for willful emissions | violations ... | | I'm just saying its not binary where either people die | and it kills the company or people aren't even harmed and | nothing bad happens at all. Plenty of "company killer" | situations where "what could possibly go wrong" got the | F-around and find out treatment. | clairity wrote: | i'd guess adding an abstraction layer (between a general | purpose microcontroller and the custom interfaces it needs to | support) is likely not worth the added complexity (and bugs), | since cars are on development cycles of many years anyway | (for the benefit of simpler software development, and the | risk reduction of being able to swap out the microcontroller | if need be). | im_down_w_otp wrote: | They actually _theoretically_ have a thing for this | already. It 's called AUTOSAR (now AUTOSAR Classic). It's | supposed to be a component architecture to write down the | software against a framework that can be backed by | different MCUs. Of course, in practice much of the | underlying esoteria of any given MCU/board configuration | bled up through the abstractions and/or produced custom | extensions. | RealityVoid wrote: | And AUTOSAR is a nightmare of a framework where it's nigh | impossible to understand what is going on because of the | crazy abstractions. | im_down_w_otp wrote: | Indeed, it's a mess and the surrounding tooling ecosystem | is a pile of weird Windows GUI tools of about the quality | you'd expect for very expensive tools that do very little | provided to a captive customer base. It's all very circa | 1990s RAD-tool mania-esque still in many ways. | | That said, we're working with some groups in some | automotive companies who are breaking this mold rapidly. | RealityVoid wrote: | Whom, if you don't mind me asking? I would.love to see | stuff change in this field. | im_down_w_otp wrote: | I can't upset the NDA Gods on this one, unfortunately. I | can say one is a traditional OEM that you wouldn't | necessarily expect to be the sort to take vanguard steps | like this and the other is a newer OEM that's not as | encumbered by tradition (though due to the supply-chain | also can't rid themselves of it). | | Shameless plug WARNING: we (https://auxon.io) are hiring | for engineering, marketing, and BD if industrial & | operational technology is your thing. | VLM wrote: | I never signed the NDA, although I follow the space | distantly, and they went public on their own website a | couple years ago with a list: | | BMW, Bosch, Continental, Daimler AG, Ford, General | Motors, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Toyota, and Volkswagen. | | I always rooted for an older competitor GENIVI which | (very handwavy in a general sense) boiled down to "make | dbus great again". I just always have a soft spot for | anything that replaces CORBA and DCOP. More or less | GENIVI had the same players as AUTOSAR. | | I believe AUTOSAR suffers from trying to do too much; | GENIVI's "all you need is a compatible bus" is the | minimum you need so simplicate and add lightness and | that's what should win; doesn't really matter if that guy | runs QNX and that other guy runs FreeRTOS as long as the | busses talk; whereas AUTOSAR tries to own and control | everything top to bottom which just ends up stifling any | productivity. | im_down_w_otp wrote: | If you look through the "Adaptive AUTOSAR" literature and | documentation that's out there you can find that enormous | chunks of it are lifted straight from GENIVI's | stack/specs. | | However, GENIVI/Adaptive-AUTOSAR tends to serve a | different function in the vehicle architecture. It's | mostly cockpit and less control/platform. AUTOSAR Classic | is still the champ on the MCU side of the house. | [deleted] | to11mtm wrote: | As others have mentioned, the peripherals/etc related to a | specific model of microcontroller and how you work with them | play a big factor. | | But I'd also like to throw in: | | - 16 years or so ago, the US side of the Auto industry was | trying to steer towards PPC. Motorola/Freescale's presence in | the market probably had a bit of a play in this, as well as | ARM's then-status of 'not quite powerful enough to be future | proof.' A StackOverflow post from 2012 [0] seems to indicate | they did indeed standardize, whether they moved on from there | is another question. | | - Most Carmakers probably -don't- want to change designs | outside of a refresh. There's a few reasons for this, | including both external (updating documentation to repair | network) and internal (when I worked at a place that did | software/services for a US automaker, we had to submit | _pages_ of documentation /paperwork to change a couple of | items placement/wording in a dialogue box.) | | [0] - https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/26035/w | hats-... | hulitu wrote: | Because the architecture is not so important. What is | important is what periphereals are available. And even if you | have the same architecture you still need to test if you | change something. And things change rapidly also in | automotive. 10 years ago you had a 100 pin micro at 32Mhz | clock with 64kb ram, now you have a 384 pin micro running | atva couple of hundred MHz with 256 MB ram. | rootusrootus wrote: | That's a fancy way of portraying big tech debt. They will pay | for these decisions later. | GeorgeTirebiter wrote: | So much speculation here. Let me set the record straight(er). | (I worked in Tesla FW, left 5 years ago.) Tesla does use | industry best practices. All code must pass MISRA checkers, | code is modular, and reused when possible. We used all sorts of | chips (that were auto qual) of many different architectures. We | had extensive tools for e.g. stack monitoring, diagnostic | readouts, and much more. If you move from, say, one ST ARM chip | to another one in a similar family, the peripherals may be a | little different, but generally work the same way (with maybe a | few more or fewer features). So reworking the I/O drivers _is_ | work, but given the excellent layering of Tesla "body control" | FW, it's really quite straightforward to pick a different | processor from a given family. It's for sure true that if you | went from ST ARM to Freescale/NXP ARM the peripherals are diff, | so yes, more time would be needed to write the I/O drivers. But | the effort ongoing when I left was exactly to make the | appropriate SW generalizations so it would be possible to do | exactly this. | hulitu wrote: | If this is true, stay away from anything Tesla does. I work in | the industry. 2 examples: 1) you have to change a transistor | with one from a different supplier, same characteristics. You | need to do some HW engineering tests. If the transistor is part | of a safety relevant function, you need to do also system, SW | and safety tests. And then environmental and EMC tests. Of | course you can tailor but you need a very good justification. | 2) You change the microcontroller. You need new SW, new tools | (emulators - takes some time to be delivered), new sourcing, | new HW design etc. It is from development perspective a new | product so you need testing (HW, SW, System, Safety) and design | validation (environmental tests, EMC) , maybe more than one | loop.And when everything is passed and sourcing is done (i.e. | you can buy the component) you can start production. | baybal2 wrote: | ARM M family cores can run each other's code more or less. | | Only the libraries for I/O need to be rewritten. | | In some cases, there are drop in replacements (Gigadevices | STM32 clones) | pwg wrote: | Except that in some cases, the automakers are not using a CPU | with external interface hardware, they are using | microcontrollers similar to the PIC series, example here: | https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/40300C.pdf | (Note, I'm not suggesting they use these exact chips, this is | just an example of the level of onboard integration that is | available for micro-controller chips). | | Single chip system, with built in analog comparators, timers, | signal capture and PWM generation module, serial UART, etc. | I.e., a whole "system on a chip" with the external world | interfaces already built into the chip. Changing one of these | for an ARM CPU with external analog comparators, timers, PWM | modules, serial UART's, etc., is a redesign effort, not just | a "change the chip" effort. If the clock speed possible via | the internal clock oscillator is sufficient, then this chip | needs only +5V and ground (plus programming) to be able to | interface to and control some external analog or digital | equipment. | legulere wrote: | That relies on I/O being written as replaceable units of code | and not sprinkled throughout all of the code. | im_down_w_otp wrote: | Are there even any ARM Cortex-M chips that are ASIL-B rated | or better? | im_down_w_otp wrote: | Looks like the Cortex-R52 and Cortex-R5, a CPU and MCU, | respectively both have been ASIL-D (the highest rating) | qualified. Which is fantastic frankly. There's a bunch of | legacy PPC, MIPS, and TriCore tech that's just miserable to | work with because of their ancient and/or bespoke & | proprietary toolchains. So, really the automotive industry | lacks excuses that I would buy for why they're not moving | forward onto new platforms other than the institutional | inertia and supply-chain entanglements that its | prioritizing instead. | detaro wrote: | yes. ARM sells appropriate designs, and e.g. NXP offers | some chips. | TaylorPhebillo wrote: | I think the Cortex-R chips are more targeted here- I think | the V8-R chips are designed specifically for automotive | use, so I assume they have appropriate ratings. | baybal2 wrote: | There are very lazy car companies which simply specify | "automotive certified" car chips for everything, | including MCUs running window switches. So, don't be | surprised $20 ARM-R based MCUs being used to do something | trivial like driving window motor. | | I seen a few dashboard where there is an STM32 sitting | connected to a single button, whose only duty is to | register a key press, and burp something on the CanBus in | response. | sbierwagen wrote: | A big chunk of this crisis was _caused_ by car | manufacturers being insanely focused on cost cutting. | Doing obviously dumb things with BOM isn 't exactly a | calling card of the automotive industry. | hulitu wrote: | Every component ( resistors, transistors, | microcontrollers, etc ) must be Automotive qualified | (AEC-Q ). That's how you have a minimum standard. A | button cannot communicate on the CAN bus that's why you | need the microcontroller. | coryrc wrote: | I guarantee you no one is running $20 MCUs in trivial | applications (in normal times). They're very cost- | conscious. | kortex wrote: | A) I doubt you need a $20 component to register a key | press and do some canbus IO | | B) If you did have a $20 microcontroller for Canbus | control of a window motor driver but it saved $19 in | extra wiring/labor (driver controls usually route to all | windows), provides reliable debounce, automated one-push- | to-open, and allows things like holding keyless lock to | close all windows, it's totally worth it. | kube-system wrote: | CPUs aren't the only silicon out of stock right now. Most | silicon doesn't even run software. | stefan_ wrote: | What software can turn a MSP430 or 68 knockoff into a highly | efficient power transistor? Take everything Musk says with some | caution.. | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | I feel like GM and Ford are at US Government and NASA size | where getting any change through takes so long and so much | middle management and red tape that it stretches to infinity. | | I'm sure Tesla is more agile than that. For better or worse | sometimes... | mathattack wrote: | The bigger the company, the more effort that's needed to | coordinate the parts. At some point one person can't keep the | whole in the head and has to lean on process. Tesla is small | enough, and has a CEO that can keep everything in his head. | ulfw wrote: | Tesla has over 70,000 employees. I know people think Elon | is god, but come on, he can't have "everything in his | head". Tesla isn't some mom and pop shop. | jillesvangurp wrote: | Tesla is much better at writing software than most of their | competitors. That's how they can adapt so quickly. | | They also do a lot more in house than their competitors. That | means they can optimize their development processes, and align | with chip suppliers across different components. If you have to | work with a multitude of suppliers that each ship their own | hardware and software, life is a lot more complicated. Changes | take years in such an environment. Even a simple thing such as | over the air updates to software is still science fiction in a | large part of the industry. VW famously struggled with doing | that for the ID.3 only managing their first updates fairly | recently. | | Of course, Tesla is still affected by supply issues as well. | They can't switch suppliers every quarter. | hulitu wrote: | You cannot replace a Xeon with an Epyc without redesigning | the motherboard. In reality is even worse. You replace a chip | from ST with one from Renesas for example. | IshKebab wrote: | Are they better at writing software or do they just care less | about how safety critical it is? | coryrc wrote: | I think you underestimate how poorly software development | is done in traditional industries. Practice makes perfect | and they mostly practice writing reports not software. | hulitu wrote: | It depends. If you want to sleep well at night you take | care. Of course if you are VW you take risks. | coryrc wrote: | Taking a long time doesn't mean you've done more useful | work. | hulitu wrote: | But a longer testing can find more bugs. | coryrc wrote: | So can a shorter one. | | (In a box at 120degC for a day is roughly equal to a | thousand days at room temperature). | | Smarter not longer. Write in a memory-safe language and | you don't need to pay people to maintain spreadsheets of | memory allocations... | kiba wrote: | Agile does not mean less reliable. See Boeing versus | SpaceX. | filoleg wrote: | It isn't that their engineers are inherently better at | writing software. The parent comment explained exactly why | their organizational and supply chain structure allows them | to be more agile and better at writing software and | delivering it. | hef19898 wrote: | I personally would rank Tesla's Supply Chain to high, so. | jbverschoor wrote: | Weeks? This has been going on for almost 100 weeks | mkr-hn wrote: | I assume the alternative chips are still in short supply, but | less so than their first choice. Everyone else is looking for | alternatives too. | LennyWhiteJr wrote: | To elaborate on this, the feature sets on these low level | microcontrollers are no standardized. There is no common API | for them to implement. Even chips coming from the same | manufacturer will have different hardware capabilities, and | although low-level drivers can abstract that way to a certain | extent, there will always be differences. | | The biggest challenge is when you need to update your firmware | to use a microcontroller from a different manufacturer. Often | times these chips are specifically chosen due to the set of | hardware functionality they offer, and the firmware is written | to take advantage of that from the start. The two are coupled. | | Now you are forced to use a _different_ chip, and the firmware | that was written for a specific set of hardware now has to be | modified for a new chip that may have a different feature set. | Things fine print on how things like Analog to Digital | converters becomes _extremely_ important. | Espressosaurus wrote: | Even a single hardware iteration intended to be a drop-in | replacement in some cases won't be due to relying on | implementation-defined behavior that is not guaranteed by the | datasheet and wasn't considered a constraint by the people | designing the silicon. Sometimes it's a bug, sometimes it's | just "didn't think that was important". | | Either way, you're left with something where the saturation | behavior changed, or it's no longer possible to read out a | value without risk of corruption since they assumed it can be | treated as write-only, or some other hard to find and debug | problem. | | Swapping out chips is an exercise in testing and risk | management, and never should be done without care, even | before we start talking about safety critical applications. | AtlasBarfed wrote: | I get that what Musk quoted is not a trivial task, and if | accurate, is probably much quicker than OEMs and Big Auto could | do since Tesla is presumably much better at software. | | The article quotes Intel at 16nm, which is, what, 10 years from | cutting edge process node? At this point mature OEMs and Big | Auto should have been on a refresh process to auto-migrate | forward the chips. The semiconductor industry is 40-50 years | old now. And new generations produce better chips (cost, power | use, performance). | | As other comments say, it smacks of laziness and lack of | forecasting. | | Tesla has other advantages, since they are so much more | vertically integrated, they can probably manage migrations a | lot more easily and centrally. | | Big Auto is more like "Big assemble OEM parts". OEMs make all | the components, Big Auto just wants to screw them into place | and wire them together. It's part of why they suck at software | that integrates things: They don't make any of the components, | and a dozen different departments order them from a hundred | suppliers, so getting interfaces/protocols/specs is a lot more | time consuming than for Tesla. | 01100011 wrote: | As far as I can tell, Tesla plays fast and loose, treating | their product like a manufacturer of consumer electronics and | not a manufacturer of a dangerous and durable good. That | obviously allows them to out-compete other auto manufacturers | who are more aware of things like product liability. | | See the Toyota accelerator-gate lawsuits. From | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_Toyota_vehic... | : | | > However, on October 24, 2013, a jury ruled against Toyota and | found that unintended acceleration could have been caused due | to deficiencies in the drive-by-wire throttle system or | Electronic Throttle Control System (ETCS). Michael Barr of the | Barr Group testified[30] that NASA had not been able to | complete its examination of Toyota's ETCS and that Toyota did | not follow best practices for real time life critical software, | and that a single bit flip which can be caused by cosmic rays | could cause unintended acceleration. As well, the run-time | stack of the real-time operating system was not large enough | and that it was possible for the stack to grow large enough to | overwrite data that could cause unintended | acceleration.[31][32] As a result, Toyota has entered into | settlement talks with its plaintiffs. | | Not following software best practices(i.e. ISO 26262) can | expose your customers to unnecessary risk and leave your | company vulnerable to lawsuits. Tesla may learn a very | expensive lesson one day, or they may get lucky. Time will | tell. | | --- | | Depending on the design of your system and software stack, | switching SoCs can be anywhere from a massive effort to a | simple recompilation. Even switching architectures could be | trivial for some components(i.e. a UI written in HTML5 making | REST API calls) or a nightmare for others(ECU, ABS or other | real-time algorithm written to use bare metal modules on the | SoC without an OS providing abstraction). | baybal2 wrote: | It is very troubling development when doing something so | trivial even requires a computer. | | That's a matter readily solved by a PID controller made of a | few dozen 74XXX parts. Possibly made n-times redundant. | | Even a more fancy LP solver probably wouldn't need a fully | fledged computer. | SkyPuncher wrote: | It's really easy to over react because of the silicone | shortage, but in many cars these chips are replacing | physically manufactured parts or significantly increasing | efficiency in a way that isn't possible with physical based | components. | | Electronic fuel injection is a _great_ example. Much of | modern fuel efficiency stems from the fact that an engine | can accurately control fuel in the cylinder based on a | bunch of factors. Not only does this system require | physically fewer materials, it uses less gas (in turn | saving production effort). | baybal2 wrote: | I think you are misunderstanding me. | | What I mean under a computer is a Turing complete | machine. A circuit just doing some LP solving, or PID is | not necessarily a computer. | rcxdude wrote: | Very little applications strictly _need_ a turing | complete machine. However microcontrollers are ubiquitous | because they are so flexible. One chip does the job of | many, and without needing to be specialised, allowing all | applications to take advantage of the economies of scale | in semiconductor manufacturing. (Also as pointed out here | you drastically underestimate the complexity of a modern | ECU) | SkyPuncher wrote: | By that explanation, I actually 100% confident I'm | understanding you correctly. | | Most of the functionality of these chips can be | represented in some form of hardware. However, that | hardware is often much more expensive, significantly less | flexible, and likely significantly bulkier. | avianlyric wrote: | There's nothing trivial about a modern internal combustion | engine. The throttle control system is doing quite a bit | more work than just opening and closing a physical throttle | valve. | tziki wrote: | Ah the classic HN "just use this things I just came up | with". | | https://xkcd.com/793/ | cycomanic wrote: | I actually believe programmers/software engineers are the | new physicists in this regard. | KZerda wrote: | Okay, so you've designed it. Now, make sure it works with | the dirty electrical signal of a typical car's power bus. | Then make sure it fits in the space requirements of under | the car's hood, or in the door, or any of the other tight | places that these embedded systems go. Then make sure that | it's verified to act over several years of vehicle life. | Then, make sure your suppliers will guarantee you that they | won't discontinue the part for at least 10-15 years because | of legal requirements for spare parts. Just throwing | discrete logic at the problem doesn't always help. | dharmab wrote: | ECUs are simpler to build than the mechanical components | they replaced and do things impossible to do mechanically | (given the space and weight limits of a car). | | Jadon Cammisa has a great series on this stuff. Here's just | one episode on one topic, drive by wire throttle control: | https://youtu.be/gKsCHx5NOMM | joking wrote: | Simpler to build, and even simpler to overbill for them. | Is insane to charge over 1000$ for some replacement logic | board. | baybal2 wrote: | Most drive by wire systems I seen are nothing, but a | simplest closed loop PIDs. | | It's very close to what you are taught in the "How to | write a PID controller" class without much extra | creativity. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | Deciding how much fuel will be injected each cycle is not | just a simple PID. The throttle body control may just be | a basic servo (although it probably isn't) but the system | controlling it is more complicated. | baybal2 wrote: | A separate circuit to map fuel/gas ratio for a given | sensor input is also not a rocket science. | dharmab wrote: | Have you looked at any vehicle from the past 3-5 years? I | own one with drive by wire and you can feel and hear it | reacting to variables when you push it to the limits | (either in inclement terrain or on a closed course). The | linked video has specific video examples from production | vehicles as well. | [deleted] | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | Let's start by assuming that the engineers are at least | basically competent, shall we? | | I mean, I could implement a PID controller without any | 74xxx logic at all: a basic op-amp, a handful of resistors | and capacitors and _boom_ I 'm done! | | But there's a reason that engineering doesn't do that these | days and it's not that engineers don't know how. My PID | control built from an opamp? In 2021 that's almost always a | stupid idea. We use computers because doing it digitally | has many advantages. We don't use 74xx (or any other logic | family) for this because microcontrollers are far more | flexible, allow for behavior changes without reworking | hardware, allow inventories to scale (the same component | can be used in hundreds of products) and more reasons I | won't detail. | | The reality is that in 2021, often the simplest, most | robust and cost-effective way to do something trivial _is_ | by using a computer to do it. | baybal2 wrote: | > The reality is that in 2021, often the simplest, most | robust and cost-effective way to do something trivial is | by using a computer to do it. | | Very much not. Complicated MCUs are a very risky single | vendor supply, and as we see now, people are now paying | for an engineering overkill. | | 74xxx are available in every shape, and form, from dozens | of suppliers. | kortex wrote: | Ok, lets assume for a moment that throttle can be modelled | by a PID plant (it can't) - is the circuit temperature | stable? You don't want the characteristics changing as the | engine. Now you need a compensator circuit. What about | power supply stability and noise? Car power busses are | hella noisy, due to alternator and spark coil. Now you need | some serious conditioning and filtering. What about | knocking? Modern ECUs adjust parameters on knock detection | to reduce the damage from pre-ignition. Gotta put in a | control system for that. | | Repeat for manifold air temp, exhaust temp, emissions, rev | limiter, etc., and as you mention, make that 3x for | redundancy. Now you have hundreds to thousands of | components, in a high noise, vibration, and temperature | environment, and you have something which is about as | efficient as an 80s car. And you can't as easily simulate | it cause it's analog. | | Or just use some digital chips and simulate all the tuning. | agumonkey wrote: | > That obviously allows them to out-compete other auto | manufacturers who are more aware of things like product | liability | | A lot of this era comes down to this. You have a legacy | industry with tons of regulations, then a new guy comes up, | steps on all the lines, and convinces people they're smarter | for doing more for less. (up until regulations come back in | the equation). | shiftpgdn wrote: | Toyota accelerator-gate is largely a farce. Almost all of the | people involved with Toyota unintended acceleration were over | the age of 65 and had the poorly designed loose floor mats in | their cars. | | Even if they had perfect readable John Carmack tier coding | they still would have lost. | [deleted] | jcampbell1 wrote: | I worked for ford many years ago and I remember a really | funny conversation between young engineers and MBA types. | The issue was the Lincoln Towncar was designed to have | extremely low pedal pressure because that is what the old | buyers liked. Combine old people with limited hearing, no | pedal pressure, and a quiet cabin it was a perfect recipe | for old people to shift and send the car through the garage | wall. Lol. The classic issue of when customers want | something stupid, do you build it? | wrycoder wrote: | Easy to do. I stepped on the accelerator instead of the | brake once. First impulse is to step harder, until you | realize what's going on. If your realization is slow, bad | things can happen. | | If bad things happen, the tendency is to blame someone | else. | andi999 wrote: | One solid step on the accelerator easily let's bad things | happen below 1s. | WalterBright wrote: | The pedals are close together in my car, and a couple times | I have hit the accelerator rather than the break. But I | knew immediately what was wrong and adjusted. | radicalbyte wrote: | It literally took me years to understand it - how can you | accelerate by accident? Until someone mentioned that all of | these cars were automatics. | | But every automatic I've ever driven (not many - I prefer a | clutch) moves forward unless you're pushing the break in. | In the rest state, it's in motion. | | The problem isn't Toyota, the problem is a broken system. | gedy wrote: | People panic and jam the wrong (or both) pedals. (There | are quite a few people who use two feet to drive | automatics, one foot for break, other for gas..) | lostlogin wrote: | > There are quite a few people who use two feet to drive | automatics | | They are very irritating to drive behind. Some seem to | keep pressure on the brake pedal, and the brake lights | stay on as they accelerate. When they slow it takes | longer to realise they are braking as the lights have | been solidly on. | frosted-flakes wrote: | Are you sure they're not just driving a manual | transmission car? I can keep my foot lightly on the brake | and apply the clutch to accelerate, without touching the | accelerator pedal (diesel engine has a lot of low-end | torque). Not that I do this in practice, except in drive- | through lines just for the fun of it. | | In first gear I can reach 8 km/h, but it's possible to | get all the way to fifth gear while idling (takes a long | time though). | swiley wrote: | I thought you would fail most driving tests doing that. | mpyne wrote: | That's a mechanical side effect of the torque converter | used in automatics, which even at engine idle with no | acceleration input is able to transfer power to the | drivetrain. | | The Toyota case was an instance of the car's engine | control software unexpectedly commanding acceleration not | requested by the user. | | In principle it could happen on a manual car as well, but | most of Toyota's vehicles in the U.S. are automatics. | AlfeG wrote: | Not sure how is this possible. Automatic cars almost | always require You to push brake constantly if you not | driving. You can't turn car on without pressing brake, | can't change to drive mode from parking state without | pressing brake. There should be something very broken in | Toyota case. | andi999 wrote: | Automatic handbreak at a traffic light? | 01100011 wrote: | Sure but that's not related to the point I'm making. The | point is that not following software design best practices | can leave you open to liability, or at least put you in | such a weak legal position that you are compelled to | settle. | | If/when Tesla gets hauled into court over its software | flaws, any lack of adherence to best practices will make | the company appear negligent. | thoughtstheseus wrote: | This is a risk adverse culture then. Tesla is spending | gobs of money specifically on building safer if not the | safest cars out there. | kevingadd wrote: | How do you square that with them removing sensors from | their cars and going all-in on doing self-driving | exclusively using vision? If they were so passionate | about spending money to make the safest cars, they'd be | doing sensor fusion. | tantony wrote: | > If they were so passionate about spending money to make | the safest cars, they'd be doing sensor fusion. | | That's your opinion. They have shown data where the | information from radar was of a lower quality than what | their vision stack was providing (e.g. lack of vertical | resolution). Watch their AI day webcast for examples. | Their current vision-only stack has been validated with | LIDAR ground-truth data. | heeen2 wrote: | Is anyone arguing for replacing vision with lidar and | radar instead of combining it? | matz1 wrote: | They specifically mention because camera is better than | radar. It gives more information than radar. | | https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1380796939151704071?s | =19 | giantrobot wrote: | > building safer if not the safest cars out there | | Unless the car loses power and catches fire. Then you | can't open the fucking doors [0]. | | [0] | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/23/man- | died-... | ahepp wrote: | Isn't the fact that Toyota lost this case damning to | traditional automotive software development practices, rather | than evidence of their importance? | | The traditional players are already doing a bad job trying to | write safety critical software the way things are now. | pokerhobo wrote: | See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5c5KzpamiM by someone | who worked for a number of auto OEMs including Tesla where he | explains how Tesla does agile hardware | rectang wrote: | From earlier discussions here | (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643551 "10,000 global | variables"), Toyota's conservative, arguably antiquated | approach to software architecture wouldn't necessarily prove | reliable as that software evolves. | | Trying to assess whether thousands of global variables are | still playing nice during a major rewrite to accommodate a | new chip would be definitely be difficult and time consuming! | | Not that a fast-and-loose approach is ideal, either. | | Writing reliable software in the context of an organization | is hard. | finnh wrote: | 10K global variables sounds insane, until i realize "oh, | huh, we have that too, we just call it _config_". | | Almost every place we would have a constant (tuning | parameters, etc) we instead have a configurable value with | the likely default declared in code, but all overridable in | config. Managing config can be a hassle, but the number of | times we've merely had to tweak a value rather than roll a | new build pays for itself every day. | | We have thousands of such "global variables"... of course | they are read-only, so aren't used to share state. | | If Toyota is doing that: nbd. If they are using them to | share state ... god have mercy on their souls. | tremon wrote: | I always interpreted the "10K global variables" to mean | 10K directly accessible, heap-allocated symbols. It's a | code reek. If you use a configuration object or other | abstraction, the number of accessible variables may not | change, but their scope and access method does. | | It's a matter of interpretation I guess, but I would not | classify a wrapper object (like .Net's | ConfigurationManager singleton) as "10K global variables" | even if the accompanying config contained 10K items, or | if the ConfigurationManager backing store was | preallocated in the data section of the binary. | delfinom wrote: | >I always interpreted the "10K global variables" to mean | 10K directly accessible, heap-allocated symbols. It's a | code reek. | | Which to me on an old _accelerator_ design is suspect | because that's alot of heap for the micros that would | have been used back in the day. This isn't a Linux | system. It was at best a micro with like 8KB of RAM. (I'm | not actually sure what it is but there's no way it was | impressive). | [deleted] | rightbyte wrote: | If they used Simulink, the model output and input, aswell | as state, are global variables when generated to C in | some settings. | jowday wrote: | I mean they also just dropped certain feature, like radar on | autopilot. | nbernard wrote: | But for the cost, couldn't (for instance) a 16nm fab produce 90nm | chips? | | If not, how complex would it be to "port" an existing 90nm chip, | to produce a 16nm revision? Impossible, or quite easy but not | cost effective? From the POV of the car companies, could such | revisions be used directly, or would they need to be qualified in | the same fashion as new parts? | coryrc wrote: | No and about as expensive as having designed it in the first | place. Given design costs are the largest portion of per-unit | costs it's not a good investment. | pedrocr wrote: | Could you explain why not? Naively, having a much more dense | process should allow automatic conversion. Going from 90nm to | 16nm is 10x the density, that's a lot of margin for an | automatic tool to use. Why doesn't that work? | coryrc wrote: | It's more than just a size change and there are features | besides transistors. Say you have a 100 fF capacitor; is | that because that's the right value based on an external | constraint (say, interacting with a crystal) or because | it's matching the inductance of a long internal path? | Because you adjust them differently based on circumstance. | And your transistors with a specific load must still supply | the same current as before so they can't shrink as much as | ones for internal logic. | | Also because the materials have changed the dialectic | constant probably has and now the relative sizes of | components need to adjust. And circuits are designed to | minimize switching loss based on the old switching time and | now they'll be wrong. | | Oh, and the breakdown voltage of the new process can't | handle the voltage many of these old circuits use IIRC. | VLM wrote: | If you're bored you can go to mycmp.fr and check their process | catalog and compare a typical 55nm run to a 160nm run. Its not | quite as standardized as ordering PCBs over the internet. | | Different metallization (you usually don't get to choose Al or | Cu) will have different resistances. Generally the smaller | processes will be faster so a design with no race conditions or | metastability problems on 160 might not run reliably or at all | on 55. Some processes are analog oriented so they'll guarantee | up to 60 volts or more, if you're trying to design power | devices, other processes are logic oriented and they might have | a standard voltage of 2.5, 1.1 etc. | | You can design something that'll run on a 55nm process and | something that'll give similar performance on a 160nm process | BUT they'll be different designs. I think the closest analogy | would be changing processes is like changing manufacturing | material. You can make a car piston out of steel or aluminum | but you can almost never just swap materials in an existing | assembly line. | dboreham wrote: | Admittedly it was a long time ago, but I worked in the semi | industry and this isn't how things were done. We manufactured | batches of totally obsolete EOLed devices for various customers | when they had sufficient volume. Devices that are in volume | production (e.g. for cars) are carefully managed by people who do | nothing but ensure that they're available in the right place at | the right time in the right volume. In order to not have product | available to meet demand either a factory has to go on fire, or | the customer has to screw up their forecast. | UncleEntity wrote: | Due to covid I'm back to driving trucks and they have the same | supply problems as everyone else -- the dude I'm working for | can't find a used truck to put me in because new trucks are | taking 6-8 months to get. | | Used trucks sell as fast as they go up on the websites (with | the lease returns from the company we're running for selling | even before that) and the truck dealers apparently think this | is the time to charge excessive finance fees (basically | doubling the cost of the truck) because they can. | | Quite a stressful time...for him. I don't really care since I'm | making money and team driving isn't as bad as I remember it | from the last time I did it 23 years ago. | mkr-hn wrote: | The customers screwed up the forecast. That's a huge part of | the problem. They assumed the pandemic would kill demand and | cancelled orders, but it didn't, and the cancelled capacity was | already sold to someone else. | tyingq wrote: | As I understand it, there's also the case that you can't just | move from one fab to another of the same process size at | will. There's different setup/software/procedures, so the | capacity isn't instantly interchangeable. There may even be | fabs with excess capacity, but no "ready" customers. | zdragnar wrote: | I know of dealerships that had sales drop by 95% in the | initial months of the pandemic. What they got wrong was the | duration of the drop and that sales would bounce back, rather | than simply return to normal after a bit. | | Now some dealerships are selling new cars _above_ MSRP, just | because supply is so low. | slavik81 wrote: | There was also a factory fire. | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26558359 | baybal2 wrote: | What an irony. Car makers with their volumes can buy decades | worth of these STM32s for the price of a single car... | jnsaff2 wrote: | Come on, let's say they get the STM32 for a quarter for a | really high volume. There are tens if not hundreds of them in | a car. 25k car would give you 100k stm32. 1k-10k cars is | hardly decades. | kube-system wrote: | And that's just one component. | [deleted] | DarkmSparks wrote: | Really well written investigative piece. Its so often forgotten | that safety critical hardware like a car ecu dances to a | different rhythm than consumer electronics that just has to not | explode in your pocket.. | Azsy wrote: | At the root is the question: "Do we make it more complex" or "Do | we do try it 3 times". | | The carmakers have been making the wrong call for the past | decades. | | One of their suppliers has eclipsed their impact on society, | marking one of the first times in something like ~70 years that | things didn't bend over to meet their needs. | | ---- | | And before you ask. Yes i would rather have a pace-maker with | triple redundancy and thrice redesigned. | dotancohen wrote: | The fine article quotes the Intel CEO: > "I'll | make them as many 16 nanometer chips as they want" | | However, > Carmakers have bombarded him with | requests to invest in brand-new production capacity for | semiconductors > featuring designs that, at best, were | state of the art when the first Apple iPhone launched. | | He then says of that: > "It just makes no | economic or strategic sense" | | So if we look at this from a capitalistic standpoint, automakers | are not offering enough money to convince Intel to continue | supplying their "old" types of chips. Either the automakers need | to supply a convincing amount of money, or they need to adapt as | their suppliers change priorities. | hef19898 wrote: | Or Intel will loose that _entire_ market to some company that | can make the business case happen. | rasz wrote: | >automakers are not offering enough money to convince Intel to | continue supplying their "old" types of chips | | Like that time Apple was "not offering enough money to convince | Intel to continue supplying their "old" types of chips" aka the | StrongArm | csense wrote: | I always thought chips were dominated by fixed capital costs of | fabs. If they were dominated by variable material cost of wafers, | as the article seems to imply, it wouldn't make sense that we see | 90nm microcontrollers that sell for $1 and a high-end 16nm PC CPU | that sell for $1000. | | So the question is, what's the reason that 90nm microcontroller | sells for $1? | | I'm trying, and failing, to figure out an economic model that | explains the market dynamics we actually observe. | | If building a new 90nm fab costs $billions, almost as much as | building a new 16nm fab, why does the 90nm microcontroller sell | for 0.1% of the price of the 16nm Xeon? | | If building a new 90nm fab costs 0.1% as much as building a new | 16nm fab, why can't existing chip companies, some startup or GM | themselves spend $10's of millions building a fab that can | unblock $100's of millions of product, and alleviate the | shortage? | sbierwagen wrote: | Chips made on modern processes _are_ dominated by capital | costs. Old chips are made on old foundries, which are fully | depreciated and therefore have no capital costs. If you made a | 90nm foundry today, then it probably couldn 't sell those | microcontrollers for less than $100 each, just like a modern | CPU. | | >why can't existing chip companies, some startup or GM | themselves spend $10's of millions building a fab that can | unblock $100's of millions of product, and alleviate the | shortage? | | They can't do it fast enough. Standing up a new foundry takes | years under the best circumstances, and today you couldn't do | it all, since all the tooling is sold out and deeply | backordered. If GM could snap their fingers today and magic a | cleanroom into existence, they'd still be waiting a hell of a | long time to put tools in it. | | Secondly on the price question, microcontrollers just have way | fewer gates than a desktop CPU. A dozen registers, a thousand | bytes of RAM, a few kilobytes of flash. This makes them | physically smaller, which lets you put more on a wafer, and | makes the unit price cheaper. The total die area of the ATmega8 | is just 7.9 square millimeters... at the 500nm node! | https://zeptobars.com/en/read/atmel-atmega8 This gets you 8,100 | dies from a single 300mm wafer. (If there are any 300mm | foundries at 500nm, which there probably aren't) | | Thirdly, what makes you think anyone could build a 90nm foundry | at all? | | Take a look at a list of foundries: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... | I don't see anything making 90nm after 2014. | | Which makes sense. Fabs don't make all their tools in-house, | that's done by vendors. As an example of one tool, by one | vendor, the NXE:3400B EUV stepper by ASML. Unit cost, $175 | million: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-euv-tools-order | | These are ultra-bespoke, super-low-volume machine tools. ASML | makes a couple dozen or a hundred steppers of a given model, | then shuts down production and starts upgrading to the next | node. Is it even possible to buy a new 90nm stepper today? | | I'm sure they have all the documentation and could roll back to | the previous generation easily enough, if they had to. (Which | they don't! They are maxed out just supplying current-gen | tools) But given all the voodoo in semiconductor lithography, | people retiring etc, I bet that rolling back two decades would | pretty much require starting from scratch. | fidesomnes wrote: | Just like how they can't build electric vehicles 10 years ago. | Yeah sure. The automotive industry is run on room temperature | IQ's. | tbabb wrote: | That website is unreadable on mobile due to ads. | EastOfTruth wrote: | Block ads? | adamrmcd wrote: | I'd love to see Ken Sherrif do a teardown of some vintage ECM. | | https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/when-did-cars-get-comput... | | (tldr) | | > So instead of one clear answer, we have three possibilities: | 1957 Rambler, 1958 Chrysler or 1968 Volkswagen. | csours wrote: | Disclaimer up front: I work for GM. I don't work on chips or | components for my day job. What follows is solely my own opinion. | | Some things to emphasize: | | OEMs (GM, Ford, Toyota, VW, etc) do not design components, and | they do not want to. They design specifications for components, | and then get suppliers to bid. This is great for efficiency in | established ecosystems, not great for agility. | | To my knowledge, GM did not cancel any chip orders, because GM | itself had no chip orders (this is oversimplified). The suppliers | cancelled chip orders. | | For a 1st tier supplier to move to a different process/chip would | also be difficult, because they do the same thing the OEM does - | supply a specification, and get 2nd/3rd tier suppliers to bid on | it. | | A wholesale migration to a modern architecture is risky and | costly. | | Smaller process/feature size on a wafer is believed to be less | resilient, for example to heat and vibration. | | The risk to large automakers is that something goes wrong and | they have to do a recall. The risk to up and comers (Tesla) is | failure to grow. Also, Tesla has a small product line and | absolute loads of cash. | | If you were going to design a new car electrical architecture | from scratch today, you would have something like a 40-60V system | with a centralized controller (or pair of controllers in a safety | redundant configuration). | | Even with a largely cleansheet design, Tesla uses 12V because of | the sheer ubiquity of 12V components. | sandGorgon wrote: | > _If you were going to design a new car electrical | architecture from scratch today, you would have something like | a 40-60V system with a centralized controller (or pair of | controllers in a safety redundant configuration)._ | | Actually this point is something im curious about - it seems to | be redundant to have a 3X redundant processor ..probably placed | in different places on the car body for safety. | | Would that not be superior to current architecture..while being | able to tap into the most modern chip architecture of the day ? | | I'm not a car engineer and dont understand CANBUS, etc. But | just wondering if this is indeed possible. | csours wrote: | Do not take any of this as a particular endorsement of a | safety system. | | Airplanes need 3x redundancy on safety critical components, | because they carry a lot of people and are not fail safe when | they are in the air. Cars can generally stop safely. | | As far as changing architectures - think about safety | critical loops and real time computing. Some processes should | never be pre-empted. | perl4ever wrote: | >Cars can generally stop safely. | | "Brake-by-wire is used in all common hybrid and electric | vehicles produced since 1998 including all Toyota, Ford, | and General Motors Electric and hybrid models." | | "Three main types of redundancy usually exist in a brake- | by-wire system: Redundant sensors in | safety critical components such as the brake pedal. | Redundant copies of some signals that are of particular | safety importance such as displacement and force | measurements of the brake pedal copied by multiple | processors in the pedal interface unit. Redundant | hardware to perform important processing tasks such as | multiple processors for the ECU" | | "The highest potential risk for brake system failure has | proven to be the Brake Control System software. Recurring | failures have occurred in over 200 cases documented in NTSB | documents. Because each manufacturer guards the | confidentiality of their system design and software, there | is no independent validation of the systems. | | As of 2016 the NTSB has not directly investigated passenger | car and light truck brake-by-wire vehicle accidents, and | the manufacturers have taken the position that their | vehicles are completely safe, and that all reported | accidents are the result of "driver error"." | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-by-wire | formerly_proven wrote: | Generally speaking those are not _purely_ brake by wire. | The master cylinder is still mechanically connected to | the pedal. However, in normal conditions the brake | actuation will be performed over wire. | perl4ever wrote: | This is a question of semantics, but I don't understand | your usage of "purely". | | How can it not be "purely" brake by wire, if, when | depressing the brake pedal, the friction brakes are not | always triggered? | | If electronics decide not to apply hydraulic force when | everything is going fine, that there must be a potential | failure mode where they ignore the pedal inappropriately. | | Can you explain further? | formerly_proven wrote: | In a brake-by-wire car, if you stomp on the brake pedal | with all you've got you end up engaging a cylinder that | can directly exert force on the front brakes, even if the | electronics are fully dead. (Maybe there are some systems | where the brake pedal is truly just a "dimmer switch", | but I've not been able to find them). | smolder wrote: | Yeah, brakes that don't function when power is lost would | just be too brittle. That'd be unacceptable in any market | regulated by one or more working brains. | tullianus wrote: | Most SpaceX hardware works this way: off-the-shelf processor, | triply redundant, using voting to figure out if one is wrong. | api wrote: | > OEMs (GM, Ford, Toyota, VW, etc) do not design components, | and they do not want to. They design specifications for | components, and then get suppliers to bid. This is great for | efficiency in established ecosystems, not great for agility. | | There are some great stories about SpaceX trying to source | components this way and then finally ending up having to DIY. | | What they found was that modern CAD and rapid prototyping made | it easier than it used to be. Car companies would probably find | the same thing, and have the luxury of doing it piecemeal at | their own pace by gradually insourcing components in the order | of necessity or benefit. | | The "do not want to" part probably points to these companies | being run by Ivy League MBAs educated in the 1990s and 2000s | when this was conventional wisdom. The world is changing. | weinzierl wrote: | I worked in aerospace for six years before changing into | automotive. The difference could not be bigger. | | In aerospace cost didn't matter a lot and many things are | custom built, even down to custom alloys and materials. Also | the amount of planning, numerical analysis, simulation, | preparation and especially testing is insane. Project | timelines are sometimes more than a decade. | | In automotive 'cost down' is _the_ mantra and is often enough | measured in fractions of cents. Almost nothing is customized | and parts reused for different product lines whenever | possible. | BuyMyBitcoins wrote: | I wish company leadership knew that conventional wisdom is | time-bound and has an expiration date. Of course, actually | trying to figure out if the conventional wisdom still holds | involves risking time and money on R&D. And, the larger the | institution the more risk averse the leadership will be. It's | a real shame that the companies you would think have the most | ability to absorb risk are the most averse towards taking | them. | roughly wrote: | It's not just science that advances one funeral at a time. | cainxinth wrote: | > A wholesale migration to a modern architecture is risky and | costly. | | I have no doubt that your company and all the other big | automakers are running the numbers and trying to weigh those | risks and costs with the risks and costs of not updating. | | Given that the chipmakers and supply chain experts are not | making rosy predictions for things to drastically improve in | the next 12 months or longer, I wonder if the balance is | shifting towards taking action. | csours wrote: | > "I wonder if the balance is shifting towards taking | action." | | I can't find a public source, but some actions are being | taken. Bear in mind that any major shifts would happen in a | new product, that is, something 5-7 years out. | mwint wrote: | Fundamentally, what is it that prevents the established | auto makers from making changes mid lifecycle? Seems like | Tesla keeps pulling it off; why can't GM? | | Is it that the component specification+acquisition cycle | you describe is optimized to take as long as the | development cycle of a new car? | willcipriano wrote: | That would be disruptive to the fiefdoms and all put all | the feudal lords into a tizzy. | syntaxing wrote: | Disclaimer: I work and worked for subsidiaries of big | automakers but this opinion is of my own. | | I would guess it's a mixture of culture, cost, and scale. | Culture wise, Tesla is extremely vertically integrated so | that gives them a lot more breathing room. Cost wise, | Tesla pretty much still sells car at a loss and relies | heavily on carbon offset subsidies for income. When your | revenue is established, trying to change margin or | anything is probably much more difficult. Lastly, it's | scale, while Tesla is trying to catch up, the throughput | of the major automakers is absolutely mind defying. The | whole system is an oil machined that any sort of downtime | is detrimental and difficult once the line is | established. To put into perspective, Tesla "monumental" | Q2 quarter shipped 200K cars or so. GM in the US only | sold 200K per month. | panick21 wrote: | > Cost wise, Tesla pretty much still sells car at a loss | and relies heavily on carbon offset subsidies for income. | | I'm sorry but that is just straight up complete nonsense. | Like seriously, you are directly disagreeing with public | financial statements. We know exactly how much margin | Tesla has, with and without carbon offset. | | The simple fact is, Tesla has leading automotive margins | even when you exclude any carbon credits. | mcguire wrote: | Hmm. I'm not sure I'd go strongly either way. | | According to reports | (https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/tesla- | profitability...) Tesla received $1600M in regulatory | credits and had a net income of $721M. | | If you look at the 10K (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edga | r/data/1318605/000156459021...), Tesla received $27,236M | in automotive revenues (which includes sales of | regulatory credits, thanks Elon). The corresponding cost | of sales is $20,259M giving gross profit of $6,977M and | gross margin of 26%. But after that, you have operating | expenses ($4,636M) (blah, blah, interest, taxes, other, | blah) and a final net income of $721M. | brianwawok wrote: | You need to read their financials closer. They are | profitable without offsets. | csours wrote: | Small company risk is failure to grow. Big company risk | is every other failure. | | Tesla is valued as a growth/tech company. As long as | people believe in their growth, they get more cash. | | I don't personally understand how Tesla hasn't had more | problems with their apparently uncontrolled engineering | changes. At least part of it is customer enthusiasm for | the product papering over any drawbacks. | | It's not that GM can't make changes like this, it's that | GM WON'T make changes like this. | | All of this is, again, solely my own opinion. | kjksf wrote: | Alternatively, maybe just like SpaceX has faster | development cycle AND greater safety and reliability of | rockets, Tesla has faster development cycle AND greater | safety and reliability of cars? | | Judging by the number of recalls, Tesla doesn't seem to | be doing worse than GM, Porsche or Ford. | vvanders wrote: | Their EMMC issue on the S was pretty egregious, that's | something you get right in even basic consumer | electronics. They also had numerous issues with door | handles(I had two fail once the car was outside of | warranty). | | There's things they do well but I don't know if I'd | qualify them as having better reliability. | optimiz3 wrote: | Tesla is past the cash raising phase though - they are | massively profitable and actively retiring debt early. | | https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/0 | 000... | | "On July 16, 2021, we issued a notice of redemption to | the holders of the 2025 Notes informing the holders that | we will redeem the notes in full in August 2021 at a | redemption price equal to 102.65% of outstanding | principal amount, plus accrued and unpaid interest, if | any." | csours wrote: | They are raising money by selling stock. | perl4ever wrote: | >Tesla is past the cash raising phase though | | It appears to me that they are steadily issuing stock at | the rate of about 20% of their market cap per year, or | roughly at the rate of $10 billion per month. | | It looks like the number of (diluted) shares outstanding | increased by over 20% between 2019 and 2020. | | What did that consist of? Their annual report says | mainly: - Issuance of common stock for | equity incentive awards - Issuance of common stock | in public offerings | | e.g. "On February 19, 2020, we completed a public | offering of our common stock and issued a total of 15.2 | million shares (as adjusted to give effect to the Stock | Split, as described in the paragraph below), for total | cash proceeds of $2.31 billion, net of underwriting | discounts and offering costs of $28 million." | | "On September 1, 2020, we entered into an Equity | Distribution Agreement with certain sales agents to sell | $5.00 billion in shares of our common stock from time to | time through an "at-the-market" offering program. Such | sales were completed by September 4, 2020 and settled by | September 9, 2020, with the sale of 11,141,562 shares of | common stock resulting in gross proceeds of $5.00 billion | and net proceeds of $4.97 billion, net of sales agents' | commissions of $25 million and other offering costs of $1 | million." | | "On December 8, 2020, we entered into a separate Equity | Distribution Agreement with certain sales agents to sell | $5.00 billion in shares of our common stock from time to | time through an "at-the-market" offering program. Such | sales were completed by December 9, 2020 and settled by | December 11, 2020, with the sale of 7,915,589 shares of | common stock resulting in gross proceeds of $5.00 billion | and net proceeds of $4.99 billion, net of sales agents' | commissions of $13 million and other offering costs of $1 | million." | | Also, as of their 2020 annual report, roughly a billion | shares were authorized to issue, which is on the order of | another 100%, or double the current outstanding. | | https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/0 | 001... | | You might dismiss this as "way back in 2020", but it does | seem to be their latest annual report. | | Their latest quarterly report is as of June 30, 2021, and | guess what? Shares outstanding are up about 4.6%. | Compounded over a year, that's going to be just about 20% | again. | | 10-Q: | https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/131860 | | "Stock-based awards" seem to have been 93 million in the | last three months. TSLA is around $775/share. | oceanghost wrote: | > I don't personally understand how Tesla hasn't had more | problems | | It's that nobody cares and the media doesn't cover it. A | friend of mine-- his Tesla has broken down a dozen times | and he still happily pre-ordered the cyber truck. | | My 10-year-old Honda has never had any work done to it | other than maintenance-- but that doesnt make the news | either. | brianwawok wrote: | And if we go for antidotes, my current Tesla has had 0 | problems or recalls, my previous Honda had many many | recalls and issues. | | This is not a useful way to look at a product. | hef19898 wrote: | Tesla has yet to do even a face lift on its Model S. In | the meanwhile most incumbent OEMs either came up with EVs | based on existing platforms or completely new EV | platforms. | rootusrootus wrote: | The little changes are going to end up as technical debt | they will pay for later. And notice that they haven't | come out with any meaningful refresh of any of their | cars, some of which have been on the market quite a | while. It's definitely too soon to suggest they have a | good, effective update strategy. | raverbashing wrote: | Yeah, I remember some talk about moving car buses to 24V or | maybe even 48V but that didn't seem to have gained ground. | hinkley wrote: | The suppliers are running in pretty thin margins aren't they? | Did they really have any choice but to cancel those orders or | potentially go bankrupt? | | If you sit on someone's shoulders and forget that they're doing | most of the work, you can be shocked all you want when they | collapse out from under you but nobody on the ground is going | to have any sympathy at all for you. | | I've worked for software subcontractors and it's always | frustrating when the customer is so excited about all the | things we're going to accomplish together, all the plans that | hinge on our mutual success, and isn't it so wonderful that | they're getting such a great deal on it too? | | Meanwhile we're slowly going broke because we can't make money | on that sweetheart deal loaded with scope creep not spelled out | properly in the contracts. Good luck with those plans when we | go under. | novok wrote: | I don't think money is a problem in this specific case. | Because of car shortage conditions they can afford to add a | few hundred dollars to the MSRP and pay more for non-cutting | edge chips and still come out fine. | alfiedotwtf wrote: | > If you sit on someone's shoulders and forget that they're | doing most of the work, you can be shocked all you want when | they collapse out from under you but nobody on the ground is | going to have any sympathy at all for you. | | Ajax Fasteners where a small manufacturer in the name of | Division of Labour, and when they went into receivership, it | took down Australia's entire car industry. Let me repeat - | Australia no longer has a car industry. | tablespoon wrote: | > Ajax Fasteners where a small manufacturer in the name of | Division of Labour, and when they went into receivership, | it took down Australia's entire car industry. Let me repeat | - Australia no longer has a car industry. | | Holy crap: | https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1719988.htm | | You'd think the car companies could have just bought the | manufacturing assets of the supplier if it was this | critical (that's assuming they weren't looking for a back | door excuse to shut down their own Australian production, | that is). | alfiedotwtf wrote: | Holy crap indeed | | ... but the Australian car industry was nothing more than | rent seeking anyway, so it was a good thing we stopped | funding a non-utility. | MichaelZuo wrote: | ' sweetheart deal loaded with scope creep not spelled out | properly in the contracts' That sounds more like a problem to | take up with your lawyers? | syshum wrote: | Automotive is notorious in MFG for being one of the WORST | industries to be a supplier in (at least for US Based | Suppliers). Low Margins, and unrealistic demands by the big | brands. | syshum wrote: | >>>To my knowledge, GM did not cancel any chip orders, because | GM itself had no chip orders (this is oversimplified). | | Come on, Really? So GM cancelled the orders for all the tings | that the chips go in, and you want to spin that as "well | technically GM did not cancel the chips" | | That is bullshit.... The supply chain does not work like that, | if GM cancels an order for 100,000 ECM's the supplier for the | ECM is going to cancel their order for 100,000 chips for them | to make the ECM for GM, it is unrealitic to believe anything | else would happen. | baybal2 wrote: | > If you were going to design a new car electrical architecture | from scratch today, you would have something like a 40-60V | system with a centralized controller (or pair of controllers in | a safety redundant configuration). | | Aircrafts historically been using high frequency AC, on both | sides of the iron curtain (as both sides were copying each | other.) | | Old analog instruments actually benefited from AC availability. | | And when SMPS were big, and heavy, transformers were much more | reliable, and smaller (and they are still are, depending on the | frequency) | | 3 phase power was also giving some interesting cost cutting | benefits at the time | snthd wrote: | >40-60V system | | What makes that voltage a better trade off? | optimiz3 wrote: | Thinner wires can be used, which significantly reduces | weight, complexity, and cost. | zh3 wrote: | Power is volts x amps. The more amps, the thicker the wires | need to be (volts are irrelvant). | | So to minise weight/wire size, use the highest voltage | possible (and thus the lowest current). Losses are purely | related to current (I^2*R) so the incentive is to squeezee | the current (so needing to increases the voltage). | | There's a reason the high-voltage overheads are 432 kilovolts | (or more); 10 amps at 432kV = 4.3MW (MegaWatts) while 10amps | from a stock AC outlet is 1.2KW (KiloWatts). The wire | thickness required for both is the same (though the HV wires | need to be better insulated, out of the way of crazy fools | etc). | | So a 60V system for a car carries 1/5 the current of a 12v | system, and the wires can have 1/5 the cross-sectional area. | | (yes, I know there are caveats when it comes to AC). | a1369209993 wrote: | > The more amps, the thicker the wires need to be (volts | are irrelvant). | | Nitpick: the wire as a whole includes insulation, which | technically does need to be thicker at high voltage (though | at 40-60V, and maybe even at 40-60kV, it's probably | dominated by tolerances for erosion and abrasion and such). | | High voltage power lines use air, which is actually a | fairly good insulator _per se_ , but has the problem that | wires tend to pass through it on their way to a short | circuit if not well-restrained. | a9h74j wrote: | Recent TIL: | | Wire _guage_ follows a 10log10 of ohms per 1000ft, relative | to 0.1 ohms per 1000ft: | | 0ga .. 0.1 ohms per 1000 ft | | 10ga .. 1.0 ohms per 1000 ft | | 20ga .. 10 ohms per 1000 ft | | 30ga .. 100 ohms per 1000 ft | | http://www.interfacebus.com/AWG-table-of-different-wire- | gaug... | csours wrote: | Other comments pointed out why higher is better. The cap at | 60v is somewhat arbitrary, but as others said, higher voltage | is harder to switch, and above 60v DC it is easy to kill | people. | R0b0t1 wrote: | Voltage levels sometimes arise from the geometry of | semiconductors, capacitors, etc. 60V is a common cutoff, | usually to give some slack to a 48V design voltage. | formerly_proven wrote: | Siblings covered why 12 V is annoying, let's talk about why | 12 V was chosen in the first place. | | 6 and 12 V electric systems in vehicles came about because | lead-acid batteries made sense in this application, and | cetpar. a higher voltage lead-acid battery is overall | costlier to manufacture, because it contains more individual | cells. Another big thing is that there are many switches and | relays in a car, and those often switch significant power. | E.g. the light switch for the headlights has to deal with | around 200 Watts total for incandescent/halogen headlights, | indicators are like 15 Watt each front and back, the starter | motor requires a tremendous amount of power, and has a very | robust power switch built into it. | | All of those switches become much more expensive when you | increase the voltage. DC at 12 V and sizable currents is | something you _can_ reliably switch with mechanical contacts | without costs going through the roof. | | Being able to use 48 V for everything in a car is more or | less dependent on using silicon switches for everything, not | something that was possible in the past. The reason why | legacy ICE cars (all ICE cars are now legacy) stick with 12 V | is because everything is 12 V, and everything would have to | change for the new voltage. | mcguire wrote: | I seem to recall, several years ago (when stopping the | engine at traffic lights and restarting as soon as the | driver released the brake), at least one company was | exploring moving to 24V. However, the effort failed | precisely because the lifetime of 24V switches was | significantly shorter. | | Naturally, I can't find any links to the info... | winrid wrote: | FWIW Almost no switches in a modern car (turn signals, | wipers, door switches) carry a significant amount of | current as they are controlled via confuzers. | | Just built a car without a single relay. I used PMUs | (basically boxes of mosfets and current sensors AFAIK). | perl4ever wrote: | >All of those switches become much more expensive | | Wouldn't a more important question be _how does the failure | mode change_? | tuatoru wrote: | Above 30V - 50V DC, contact arcing becomes a huge | problem. (It's a problem below that, but less huge.) | | With AC, the arc will self-extinguish a half-cycle after | the switch opens. With DC there is no cycle, and contacts | can be completely vaporised in tens of milliseconds. | | Commodity switching components are usually rated "30V DC, | 250V AC" for this reason. | | It is possible to design switches so that even DC arcs | self-extinguish, but the result is expensive and not as | reliable as one could wish. | | If cars had been invented after 1980, they would probably | use solid-state switches except for the very high current | circuits such as the starter solenoid and headlights. | (Transistors were around a lot earlier than that, but | engineers are sensibly cautious about new technologies.) | | Edit: To answer your question directly: no. Cost is | prime. | grecy wrote: | Plenty of older diesel road vehicles like Land Cruisers run | 48V for everything. They've been that way since the 80s | (maybe 70s). | | Note: These were never sold in the North American Market, | but they're extremely common in Australia, South Africa, | etc. | orthoxerox wrote: | Lower amperage. | dotancohen wrote: | I'm not the OP nor an electrical engineer, but I believe that | you can get higher DC power with less resistance losses using | higher voltage and lower amperage. Additionally, this allows | the use of thinner wire (lighter, cheaper, easier to package | in tight locations). | acranox wrote: | Another factor I haven't seen mentioned in the responses yet | is safety to human bodies. You (or your kid) can stick a wet | finger in a 12V DC charger socket in your car and not get an | electric shock, including any of the exposed contacts under | the hood, including the battery terminals. But once you're up | to 40-60V, the risk of electric shock to humans is actually | something that needs to be factored in. | R0b0t1 wrote: | You'll get a shock if wet slightly below 9V. It just stays | on your skin. Voltage penetrates dry skin at around 50V, | and this is the legal definition of high voltage. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | Something I learned around 12 years old, licking the | terminals of a 9V battery :-) | YZF wrote: | 40V is still fine IIRC. I think 48V is the threshold. | oehtXRwMkIs wrote: | What amperage are we talking about here? Discussions of | electrical safety solely in terms of voltage is nonsense. | buescher wrote: | One of the big issues with 40-60V systems, which have been | right around the corner for 20 years now, maybe more, has | been that typical relay contacts arc over at about 28V DC. | Yes, there are ways to adress this. No, none of them are as | practical as relays yet. | idiotsecant wrote: | This isn't really a fundamental problem. It just means | using relays with contacts rated for higher voltages. It's | probably the _easiest_ part of the bom on a typical vehicle | to move to a higher voltage range. I use 125VDC contact | /coil rated relays all the time. | formerly_proven wrote: | It _is_ a fundamental problem (it 's physics). The | current rating for relays drops off sharply as the DC | voltage increases; you might see 125 V DC rating, but the | current will be a fraction of the nominal current at the | rated _AC_ voltage. If you 're using an relay rated for | up to 250 VAC/DC, then the breaking capacity with DC | might be as low as 1 % compared to AC. Bad relay | datasheets don't mention this at all, or maybe only for | 30 V. Good datasheets have plots of capacity vs. voltage | and current vs. life (rated capacity of relays is | generally for around 100k cycles). | idiotsecant wrote: | I am an engineer in a field that has been using >100VDC | relays for _a hundred years_. There is a sizable supply | chain out there for these things. You can buy them in | whatever amperage you need, they just use different | construction from typical low frequency AC relays. Wipers | are often high quality metallurgy to extend life and they | make use of simple passive magnetic snubbers to 'blow | out' the arc that is self-extinguishing in AC circuits. | They aren't substantially more expensive than regular | high quality AC relays and use standard form factors. | OliverJones wrote: | Vehicle electronics have some real environmental challenges as | well. | | They have to function correctly * after they've | been parked outdoors in Death Valley all day. * after | they've been parked at -40 degrees for a long time. * | when doused with slush containing road salt. * when | their wiring harnesses deteriorate after a couple of decades of | hard use. * at least for a few seconds after a | catastrophic crash. | | It takes the kind of risk-taking guts that Tesla exhibits to push | new, better, electronic parts into test and production. Most car | companies' executives, designers, and test engineers just don't | want to take those risks. | cma wrote: | > risk-taking guts that Tesla exhibits to push new, better, | electronic parts into test and production. | | After their delaminationg non-automotive grade screens I'd be | wary. | | Their solution to it was to make the air conditioner always run | in the sun when parked and promote it as a feature, wasting | untold megawatt hours of electricity. | Ekaros wrote: | That sounds like possible death trap. Drive Tesla to some | place without range, stay out there for week. Then come back | an notice car is dead and you can't reach next charging | station. | | Maybe this is why Musk is making Starlink... | useful wrote: | you can tow charge an electric car with another car or | truck | Ekaros wrote: | How do you order an other car or a truck if you can't | make phone calls? | burntwater wrote: | I looked into this a few weeks ago while exploring | purchasing an electric car, and from what I could find | "tow charging" was experimented with but has basically | been given up on. The expectation is that if you lose | power, you will need a flatbed truck to cart the car to a | charging station. | rampant_ai wrote: | Charging efficiency isn't 100%, so you'd have to tow it | further than the range you need. Seems like it'd make | more sense to just tow it to a charger. | tantony wrote: | > Charging efficiency isn't 100%, so you'd have to tow it | further than the range you need | | That's not how it works. You basically get 5 mpg or less | on the truck, while the car charges at significantly | higher rates than the speed of the truck (in mph), | because the car is more efficient at using the energy. | | https://insideevs.com/news/514727/tesla-towing-70mph- | fast-ch... | | Towing at 70mph in the above example was charging the car | at 65 kW. That's equivalent to ~260-270 mi/hr of charging | rate assuming 250Wh/mi. | seabrookmx wrote: | The comment you replied to is still correct though. | | Distance wise, tow charging makes no sense. Energy wise, | maybe it does. | phkahler wrote: | Give me a microcontroller with between 32K and 2MB of onboard | flash, some eeprom, multiple CAN peripherals, ADC, SPI, good | timers, and some specialized peripherals - synched PWMs with dead | time for driving power electronics, and some other special | things. Dual-core lockstep for safety critical things (like the | fronk latch). Some combination of all that at a price starting | under a dollar. | | Oh, and a temperature range of -40 to +125C ambient. | | Can Intel do that on their obsolete 16nm multipatterning process | for anywhere near the price target? Didnt think so. | YetAnotherNick wrote: | ESP32 satisfies each of your requirement. They are available | for $1(without BT sensor) in bulk pricing, have 4MB flash, have | eeprom, have CAN, ADC, SPI, goof timers, good PWM, good DAC, is | realtime, dualcore, and ambient temperature range of -40 to | +125 C. | dvh wrote: | Aren't all esp32 out of stock on digikey? | phkahler wrote: | ESP is close. I was poking at Intel claiming they could help | when they dont have anything close and wouldn't want to for | the price. | kazinator wrote: | Any discussion about why you can't transition to newer chips that | doesn't mention the software is incomplete. | | Chips are not fungible in part because of software compatibility. | | OK, so you got a newer chip, and have redesigned the board and | everything to fit. Now you have to get all the old firmware | running on it and validate it. | | If the new chip isn't a 100% backwards compatible version of the | old one, including all the peripherals, that could be a | considerable effort, fraught with risk. | VLM wrote: | In the long run we'll only use FPGAs and soft cores. | | In 2050 if your old 2035 Ford needs a new ECU you'll just stuck | a somewhat newer and larger FPGA on it, and if the 2035 ECU | needs three hardware I2C bus with clock stretching, one of | which bus has to do 10 bit I2C addrs and it also needs three | hardware PWM pins with 11 bit resolution and two 8051 cores | running at 5.25 MHz each and two CANBUS, you (or more likely | Ford) will just compile the brand new FPGA to have exactly and | precisely all that stuff and it'll work fine. | noir_lord wrote: | I think you are probably right, economies of scale mean that | using a ridiculously powerful modern process to emulate an | old processor often makes sense. | | The C64 mini runs a modern(ish) arm processor and an emulator | to pretend to be a C64 - that's a machine that is literal | multiple orders of magnitude more powerful than the original | system. | etaioinshrdlu wrote: | Can we manufacture designs for larger/older process nodes on | newer ones? I understand it's a little bit like the DPI on a | printer. I imagine there are many other changes, and expense, but | would it work? | IshKebab wrote: | Why can't they just make pin-compatible versions of the chips | using new processes? That would take time, but surely easier than | investing in new fabs for old processes? | uvesten wrote: | I did a short stint in the automotive industry ~10 yrs ago (on | the software/safety side) at one of GM's brands. The lack of | forward-thinking was absolutely horrible, as was the constant | insistence that anything new would never work (you remember the | constant doomsaying about tesla?). I got out as fast as I could, | I seriously think that being in that environment might cause | serious mental impairment... So, not in the least bit surprised | about this. Just nice to hear that the world is moving on whether | the big auto brands wants it to or not. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-10-02 23:01 UTC)